


and we're all hurting

by chasingblue57



Category: Code Black (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season Finale Tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-23 07:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9646379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingblue57/pseuds/chasingblue57
Summary: It’s a relief, to walk into his room, to see him smiling at Angus up close, dark eyes finding hers as soon as she passes through the door frame. She feels like there’s air in her lungs again, like they’ve been a little lacking for the last two days and now she can finally breathe. [The hospital room scene, in detail.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the season finale! (Which, holy cats!)

When the quarantine is over, they begin resettling their recovering patients. Noa’s exhausted but there’s work to do, so she moves from room to room just like she’s always been taught, seeking out Mario’s window with every spare second she has.

He sleeps for a few hours after he gets his transfusion, and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t turn that she notices it, but of course when he wakes up she’s busy with patients, helping Hannah and Jeremy get resettled and together again. Angus is there though; he catches her long glance and the way she frowns anxiously as he startles in his bed, clearly a little confused. “I’ll check on him,” and then he’s gone before she can even breathe a thank you (not that Angus needs it, he’s anxious about his best friend too; he’s just been better at hiding it for her sake).

She still watches from the corner of her gaze, every chance she gets, as she double checks Jeremy’s vitals and then unhooks everything not essential so they can make the slow and steady trek to Hannah’s room. It’s worth it, she knows, when they settle together, looking like all the pieces of their world are finally back in place.

Noa hesitates just another second, making sure they’re both stable, and then excuses herself to take care of her world.

It’s a relief, to walk into his room, to see him smiling at Angus up close, dark eyes finding hers as soon as she passes through the door frame. She feels like there’s air in her lungs again, like they’ve been a little lacking for the last two days and now she can finally breathe and it’s impossible not to smile as she takes the spot Angus vacates for her, close enough to feel the warmth of his knee against her hip, the slight press of pressure through a few layers of fabric: steady, sure, alive.

“I’m glad you’re here,” seems to fall out of his mouth as easy as breathing and the significance of that is not lost on Noa: Mario Savetti isn’t the kind of man to easily admit to faults or weaknesses or need, his pride is hard won and she knows he clings to it (the same way that she does), so it says a lot to hear him admit that, eyes honest when hers fly back to them, so much hanging in the air between them. In her head, she hears Angus, ‘He knows how you feel about him, I promise’, a little buzz ringing until he speaks again, that hint of a smirk chasing away the seriousness of his expression. “Even if I did have to catch a deadly virus.”

It probably says something about who they are as people that she can only grin back, murmur “shut up” without any heat and then cross the space between them for a kiss that they’ve put off too long.

It’s soft and sweet and brief, but it’s real and it’s (finally, finally) happened and she needs to get back to her patients, he needs to sleep (for hours, for days, maybe for weeks; she’s going to be so ridiculous about this, she’s sure) but for now, it’s enough. There’s a hundred things she should probably say, but she knows that Mario knows them, that he can read them in the way she assures him she’s “still not flirting”, because all this stuff between them is so much more than that.

She walks out without stopping, knowing if she does she’ll never get back to work, but she pauses to glance in his window and catches his lingering gaze, mouthes “sleep” to him as his eyes roll and then proceeds to make sure that he actually is sleeping between every patient check she does.

(And when she finally, finally gets off shift, a few hours later, she takes a page out of Hannah and Jeremy’s book and curls up on his hospital bed, drifting off to the steady, certain beat of his heart.)


	2. a nap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The nap, in greater detail.

He wakes up to the feeling of weight pressing against him, warm and abrupt. Pulling open his eyelids feels like a lot more work than it should, but the sight that awaits him once he’s managed it is definitely worthwhile. “Noa?” tumbles out, a little rough, as he takes her in.

She’s in the chair next to him, head pillowed in her arms and leaning on the bed itself, one hand pressed against his bicep, having moved a little in her sleep. Her red hair everywhere, the long sides escaping the twist she always pulls it back into and he can hear her heavy breathing. Of course she’s tired, she’s been up treating patients for the majority of the last two days too.

“Noa,” he tries again, clearly his throat to call her name a little louder. “Noa,” he shifts, reaching out his free hand to skim his fingers along her temple and through her hair. She stirs at the touch.

“Mario?”

The sound of her voice, tangled with his own exhaustion, makes him smile. “You look like hell,” he tells her, the tone obviously affectionate. It earns him a quirk of a smile and he’s glad that she knows he’s only teasing. She looks absolutely fucking breathtaking all the time and he’s going to work up the nerve to actually tell her as much, out loud, as soon as he can get out of this bed and really do something about it. For now, he adopts his best doctor tone, “You need sleep.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, brusque and dismissive, “I’m not going home.” It hangs there for a second, littered with implications that they’re both still too tired for and then she tacks on, “We’re understaffed and overfilled. I just need a nap and then I’m going back to the floor.”

That it’s still crazy, that the ER and the rest of the hospital are still reeling with the aftershocks of the virus, goes unsaid but Mario gets it. Didn’t he just pull a ridiculously stupid triple shift just a few weeks ago?

It’s pretty pointless to argue with her, knowing he’d make the same decision for the same reasons, so instead he just starts shuffling over to the far side of the hospital bed, ignoring her arched brow until he’s managed to create an adequate pocket of space on the one side. He gestures at it with a nod of his head but doesn’t say anything else, letting her take the hint if she wants to.

There’s a long pause where she watches him, dark eyes searching, and then she gives a quiet sigh and pulls herself onto the too narrow space, arranging herself neatly into the space he’s no longer occupying. In the process of getting comfortable, Noa’s head finds itself tucked against Mario’s chest, ear pressed against the steady beat of his heart.

She breathes, “thank you” instead his chest, warm air against warm skin, and he lets his cheek rest against the top of her head as he repeats the two words back to her.

Angus notices them a little while later, fast asleep, when he stops to check in.

(He may also snap a quick picture on his cell phone and send said picture to Malaya but he’s pretty sure they’ll be thankful for it someday).

**Author's Note:**

> I am going to revisit this scene and this episode so much in the next few weeks (months! maybe always!) because it totally broke me to pieces but it was so good! Also, hot damn, are those cannons I hear? Do I ship a thing that has actually happened? Also, please note, I am totally going to do a fic about that whole FaceTime thing when I’ve had a little more sleep. 
> 
> If you have any fic requests over this long hiatus, let me know!


End file.
